Interview Questions for Dilek Fraisl, Research Scholar at IIASA

Interview Questions for Dilek Fraisl, Research Scholar at IIASA

In a world where data is crucial for tracking progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), citizen science projects are emerging as valuable resources, particularly in areas beyond environmental indicators. These initiatives, which involve communities in data collection, can significantly contribute to monitoring indicators related to education, health, social inequality, and infrastructure.

One such example is in the realm of quality education (SDG 4). Citizen science projects that engage students and communities in collecting data on school attendance, completion rates, or learning proficiency can help address gaps in educational progress monitoring, especially in low-income regions where official data is limited.

Health and well-being (SDG 3) is another area where citizen science can make a substantial impact. Community-based data collection on public health issues, disease outbreaks, or access to healthcare services can fill gaps in real-time health metrics not always captured by official statistics.

Citizen-led surveys or mobile data reporting on experiences of discrimination, access to services, or socio-economic conditions can complement statistical measures that governments find challenging to collect comprehensively (SDG 10). This approach can provide a more nuanced understanding of social inequalities.

In the pursuit of affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), projects where citizens monitor electricity access or renewables deployment at the local level can help provide granular data supplementing official statistics.

For sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11), citizen science in urban monitoring—such as infrastructure quality, transportation availability, or housing conditions—can generate data addressing urban sustainability gaps.

While environmental citizen science projects are well-documented (like river monitoring), expanding to social and infrastructural domains is increasingly recognized as beneficial for a multi-dimensional SDG monitoring framework. Participatory education projects raise sustainability awareness and also collect data, as exemplified by interdisciplinary sustainability education projects that engage students in practical measurements.

Citizen science data can support the improvement of public services through an ongoing feedback loop between citizens and public authorities. An example of this can be seen in a project implemented in Ghana, which integrated citizen science beach litter data into the country's official statistics.

However, integrating citizen science data into official statistics requires effort, including building trusted partnerships around citizen science data. Standardization can help address the scalability issue in citizen science projects, as it could help make different citizen science data sets comparable and improve data quality.

Despite the progress, significant data gaps persist. The 2022 SDG Report highlights data gaps in terms of geographic coverage, timeliness, and level of disaggregation of data. Citizen science data can help fill these gaps, particularly in areas like climate action (Goal 13), where data is scarce, and in monitoring social indicators such as sexual violence, access to basic services, child development, and child labor.

Ghana stands as a pioneer in this regard, becoming the first country to report on the SDG indicator related to marine plastic litter (14.1.1b) and the first country to use citizen science data for that purpose.

In conclusion, citizen science projects that engage communities in reporting educational access and quality, health outcomes, social inequality conditions, and infrastructure availability represent promising approaches to filling data gaps in SDG indicators beyond environmental topics. This complements the existing strong focus on environmental monitoring in citizen science while supporting more holistic SDG monitoring and progress assessment.

1. Innovation in data collection lies in citizen science projects, especially in areas like education, health, and social inequality, where official data is limited.
2. Citizen-led surveys or mobile data reporting can provide a more nuanced understanding of social inequalities and complement statistical measures that governments find challenging to collect comprehensively.
3. In the realm of quality education, citizen science projects can help address gaps in educational progress monitoring, particularly in low-income regions, by engaging students and communities in data collection.
4. Data collected through citizen science projects can support the improvement of public services through a feedback loop between citizens and public authorities, as demonstrated by projects like the Ghana beach litter data integration.
5. Standardization can help address scalability issues in citizen science projects, making different citizen science data sets comparable and improving data quality.
6. In the pursuit of sustainable cities and communities, citizen science in urban monitoring can generate data addressing urban sustainability gaps, such as infrastructure quality, transportation availability, or housing conditions.
7. The integration of citizen science data into official statistics can significantly contribute to filling data gaps, particularly in areas like climate action, where data is scarce, and in monitoring social indicators like sexual violence, access to basic services, child development, and child labor.

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